Jesuit coordinator named to assist volunteers working in New Orleans

Published: 2006-07-10

NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- The Jesuit network of high schools, colleges and universities has produced an influx of volunteers ready to roll up their sleeves and get to work in the ongoing efforts to rebuild and renew New Orleans nearly a year after Hurricane Katrina. Now the New Orleans province of the Society of Jesus has hired a coordinator to organize these efforts, finding places for volunteers to work, sleep and eat, as well as to reflect on their experiences in the manner of St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits. The coordinator, or pastoral associate for relief ministries, is charged with all this and more, working out of a new province office where a smaller post-Katrina staff is confronted daily with more responsibility than ever before. "The work is always going to be here," said Jocelyn Sideco, who left her job as a liturgist at Marquette University in Milwaukee to take the pastoral associate post in New Orleans. Since she started in March, Sideco, 29, has coordinated the efforts of more than 650 volunteers -- students, faculty and staff from Jesuit schools, as well as others with Jesuit connections.

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